Abstract
This chapter clarifies the meaning of “Asian American” in Asian American Christian ethics by harkening back to the political activist, transnational, and coalitional roots of the Asian American movement of the 1960s–1970s. While affirming the relationship between the authors’ social location and the work they produce, they first narrate how they—a mixed race Filipina American and a second-generation Taiwanese American—first came to identify as Asian American and do work in Asian American Christian ethics. In sharing about their professional development, they also name the formative influences upon them, particularly from Asian and Asian American women. They conclude with their hopes for future directions of work in Asian American Christian ethics.
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Notes
- 1.
Minelle Mahtani, Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014), 3.
- 2.
See Sang Hyun Lee, From a Liminal Place: An Asian American Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010).
- 3.
The original participants of the Asian and Asian American Working Group of the Society of Christian Ethics asked similar questions about themselves when they met for the first time in 2008 (i.e., about why so few of them were pursuing scholarship with special relevance for Asian Americans or that seriously Asian American identities and experiences); see the preface to Asian American Christian Ethics, ix–xi for speculation as to the reasons why.
- 4.
For representative works, see Kwok Pui-lan, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005); Rita Nakashima Brock, “Cooking without Recipes: Interstitial Integrity,” in Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion and Theology, eds. Rita Nakashima Brock et al. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 125–44; Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001); K. Christine Pae and James W. McCarty III, “The Hybridized Public Sphere: Asian American Christian Ethics, Social Justice, and Public Discourse,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 32, no. 1 (2012): 93–114; Gale Yee, “Ying/Yang is Not Me: An Exploration into an Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics,” in Ways of Being, Ways of Reading: Asian American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Mary F. Foskett and Jeffrey Kah-Jin Kuan (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2006), 152–63.
- 5.
Christine Pae’s work has been crucial for Lisa for the ways it models liberative ethics from an Asian/Asian American perspective, and Lisa first connected with her through the PANAAWTM network after studying her work in coursework in Christian ethics with her advisor, Traci West. Grace Kao coedited the pioneering 2015 anthology Asian American Christian Ethics, which has shaped much of Lisa’s thinking as she has continued to hone her scholarly voice. Grace was also the first person to invite Lisa to participate in the Asian and Asian American Working Group of the Society of Christian Ethics.
- 6.
Letty M. Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 57.
- 7.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Discipleship of Equals: A Critical Feminist Ekklesia-logy of Liberation (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1993).
- 8.
As Daryl Joji Maeda has noted, “coalitional politics was not simply a by-product or late addition to the movement, but rather was foundational to its understanding of the United States as a capitalistic and imperialistic system that exploited people of color both within and outside its borders.” See Daryl J. Maeda, Rethinking the Asian American Movement (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), 1.
- 9.
See, for example, Yuri Kochiyama’s reflections on how she came to the Asian American movement only after having been involved in other people’s struggles and understood the Asian American struggle as one part of the larger, worldwide movement for justice in her Passing It On: A Memoir (Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2004).
- 10.
For an exploration of these ideas, see Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup Ahn, “Introduction: What is Asian American Christian Ethics?” in Asian American Christian Ethics: Voices, Methods, Issues, ed. Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup Ahn (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2015), 1–17.
- 11.
Kao and Ahn, “Introduction,” 16–17.
- 12.
As Leny Mendoza Strobel writes, the colonization of the Philippines in 1898 “played a critical role in the way the U.S. defined itself as a world power” and yet today “very little remains known and remembered about the far-reaching consequences of this relationship.” See her Coming Full Circle: The Process of Decolonization Among Post–1965 Filipino Americans (Quezon City: Giraffe Books, 2001), vi.
- 13.
Oscar V. Campomanes, “Filipinos in the United States and their Literature of Exile,” in Discrepant Histories: Translocal Essays on Filipino Cultures, ed. Vicente L. Rafael (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995), 159–92.
- 14.
David Fagan was the most famous Black deserter: he apparently “accepted a commission in the [Filipino] insurgent army and for two weeks wreaked havoc upon the American forces.” See Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492–Present (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 319.
- 15.
The Tydings-McDuffie Act or the Philippine Commonwealth and Independence Act (Pub. L. 73–127, 48 Stat. 456, enacted March 24, 1934) provided for independence to take effect on July 4, 1946 after a transitional, ten-year period of Commonwealth government. Sec. 2(11) reads as follows: “The Philippine Islands recognizes the right of the United States to expropriate property for public uses, to maintain military and other reservations and armed forces in the Philippines, and, upon order of the President, to call into the service of such armed forces all military forces organized by the Philippine government.” For the text of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order of July 26, 1941, see Michael Cabotaje, “Equity Denied: Historical and Legal Analyses in Support of the Extension of U.S. Veterans’ Benefits to Filipino World War II Veterans,” Asian American Law Journal 6 (1999): 74.
- 16.
President Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Amendments Act into law on December 20, 1941 (Public Law 77–360; 55 Stat. 844). The Second War Powers Act was signed into law on March 27, 1942 (Public Law 77–507; 56 Stat. 176). According to para. 14 of the Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2015, some 16,000 Filipinos alone in California joined the war effort as a result.
- 17.
Rescission Act of 1946 (38 U.S.C. §107). As Michael Cabotaje observes, full veteran benefits include “vocational rehabilitation for service-disabled veterans, loan guaranty benefits, compensation for disabilities incurred while on active duty, nonservice-connected pensions, VA medical care, VA life insurance, and burial and death benefits” (“Equity Denied,” 77).
- 18.
Antonio Raimundo, “The Filipino Veterans Equity Movement: A Case Study in Reparations Theory,” California Law Review 98, no. 2 (2010): 579.
- 19.
Mai-Anh Le Tran, Reset the Heart: Unlearning Violence, Relearning Hope (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2017).
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Yee, Gale. “Ying/Yang is Not Me: An Exploration into an Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics.” In Ways of Being, Ways of Reading: Asian American Biblical Interpretation, edited by Mary F. Foskett and Jeffrey Kah-Jin Kuan, 152–63. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2006.
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Pratt, L.A., Kao, G.Y. (2020). On Becoming Asian American Christian Ethicists. In: Kwok, Pl. (eds) Asian and Asian American Women in Theology and Religion. Asian Christianity in the Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36818-0_15
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